We've been caught on the horns of a legal dilemma. Here's the deal.
There's a City ordinance that prohibits portable signs on the streets - what we all know as 'sandwich boards'. It's been in place for a while, and periodically there's a fuss about how crowded the sidewalks are followed by threatened enforcing of the ordinance, and then it all blows over and we all go back to complacently ignoring the ordinance.
Yesterday, though, we were served with formal notice that, while our sign outside the shop door can stay, the one we routinely put down on the corner of 1st Ave. and Cherry has to go, and if it is sighted again, we'll end up paying a $597 fine. We can buy a lot of books for that amount, frankly.
But that's not the really damaging issue for us.
The problem is that we're a bit hard to find, being tucked away up on Cherry. Not even the natives can always find us, and tourists are going to miss us completely. We derive a great deal of our income from folks who have heard of us and stop by when they're in town. If they can't find us, they won't come in. We hear time and time again, "We saw your sign and had to come up", or "Without that sign, we'd never have found you".
This could, quite literally, put us out of business. The nauseating irony is that by doing this they can and will impact our sales and that means less sales tax. So, during tough economic times or not, making it more difficult for shoppers to find us means lower tax revenue for the city. Self-defeating, isn't it?
One of the reasons given is that these signs can block access and can be blown over in the wind. Not that ours do, you understand, but they could. Never mind that we're very careful not to block the access ramps, or that we're the first folks in the area to go grab our signs when they get blown over. And we never put balloons on our signs, which is also prohibited, as many of our fellow sign-boarders do. And never mind that we've never heard, in nearly 20 years of being here and using signs, of anyone being hurt by one.
In fact, the photo they attached with the notice that we must cease and desist proves that we're not blocking the disabled ramp access, that the sign is standing and that there's nothing attached to it.
It'll be interested to see whose signs are still out and about, whether or not this rule is being uniformly enforced or if it's aimed at us specifically. We've certainly complained about the lack of parking here, and how the City's equipment is blocking the street, so we could have come to their attention this way.
JB has sent an email to the SDOT inspector who cited us, copies being sent to the Mayor and various news folks. We can only hope they'll re-think this position, perhaps grant a waiver of some sort. But we're not going to hold our breaths.
What's the old adage? You can't fight City Hall...
As we sit here typing this, it is late morning on a sunny day. We've begun to see groups of tourists, families of frustrated parents and cranky children, retirees and conventioneers wandering through the shop. Our busiest time of the year is just beginning. For us, it isn't December - it is the half of the year from Spring Breaks to the beginning of school in September that is the busiest. Tourists come in and see things that they've not seen at home: used books they've been looking for, signed books by authors who don't come to where they live, books by Seattle writers that get no exposure back in the other parts of the country. The sandwich board points them up the street and they come in to kill time before an Underground Tour or browse while Gramps sits and rests his feet. They pick up a few things and learn that they can order from us when back home. They become mail order regulars, calling or e-mailing to have us send books, or they make a point of stopping here each time they come to Seattle to visit the kids or the grandchildren. But if the sandwich board can't be out at the intersection, none of that happens. Our customer base isn't expanded, we don't make sales and take in sales tax, we don't need to hire any extra people if sales aren't good and the entire thing grounds to a halt.
As we wit here typing this, it is late morning on a sunny day and the shop is empty of customers.
The sandwich board is not down there to point them our way.
And you can't fight City Hall.